


bloom all night

by pixiepower



Series: i don’t want no other sauce [1]
Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Coworkers - Freeform, M/M, Pining, bon appetit au, gourmet makes with xu minghao, implied aged up, it’s alive! with kim mingyu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-02-18 18:15:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21531199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pixiepower/pseuds/pixiepower
Summary: “When was the last time you ate something that wasn’t made of chocolate?” Mingyu says, palms flat on the workstation. Minghao looks up then, pulling a face, nose scrunched up with distaste. The effect is wonderful, especially with his messy hair andglasses.Mingyu laughs. It echoes against all the metal in the room, too-loud among the darkness. “That’s what I thought.”•There’s something to be said for the way Mingyu comes running when he’s called. He likes when he’s needed, especially in the kitchen, and Minghao needs him sometimes. More than he might like to admit.
Relationships: Kim Mingyu/Xu Ming Hao | The8
Series: i don’t want no other sauce [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1552555
Comments: 14
Kudos: 203





	bloom all night

**Author's Note:**

> title from “melting point” by gwsn.
> 
> thank you, pey, for planting a cabbage seed.  
> thank you, chris, for sharing a workstation.
> 
>  **june 2020 note:** i decry the fundamentally inequal and often hostile workspace fostered for bipoc contributors at condé nast, at both the real bon appétit magazine and especially in its test kitchen. this fic series was never meant to exactly replicate that environment, and i leave them up not only as a reminder that our comfort content is not immune to systemic inequality, but also in the hopes that we may continue to find some happiness in the fictionalized version of it that i have created here. sending love! isi

“So, are you just going to make the classic Kinder Surprise or are you doing the Kinder Joy Eggs with the crunchy bits, no toy?” Mingyu leans his chin on his hand, legs spread at an obtuse angle so he can rest his elbow on the counter. He can tell a camera swings around to capture the whole giraffe-at-a-watering-hole thing he has going on behind Minghao’s workstation.

“Yes,” Minghao monotones, meaning _both_ in that way where he seems half excited for the challenge and half like he would throttle Jihoon if he didn’t respect him so much as a professional peer and a friend.

Mingyu’s face lights up. “What are you going to do for the toy?”

Laughing, Minghao makes a woebegone face. “That is not the point here, Mingyu!”

Mingyu splays both hands onto the workstation dramatically. “Of course it is! It’s fucking _Kinder Surprise!_ That’s the surprise! The surprise is the toy! Can I open one?”

Minghao rolls his eyes with a grin and unwraps another egg carefully, pressing out the tinfoil with his thumbs to approximate the size of the sheet. Mingyu tears into an egg of his own, cracking it open by accident with the force of his zeal. The juxtaposition is not lost on Mingyu, who peels off the rest of his own foil like a banana and takes a bite out of the cracked top. It’s good, milk chocolate and a firm cream, the little golden capsule rattling around in his hand like a reward. “I thought it was white chocolate in these,” Mingyu says, chewing thoughtfully.

“Me, too. I haven’t had one since I was a kid, though. I guess I just had the image in my mind of it and forgot what the inside was like. Oh! Vernon-ah! Come here!”

Swiveling his head from where he stands at the desk at the wall, Hansol’s eyes widen at the mountainous display of red-and-white eggs, and his voice pitches excited. “Oh, no way!”

“Right?” Mingyu says happily, and he knows he can’t stop smiling, but it’s Day One for Minghao and anything is possible on Day One. They always start out optimistic.

Mingyu chances a glance at Minghao’s face, and, well, maybe this time they’ll start out more… cautiously optimistic.

“These are banned in America. And, like, Chile, or somewhere,” Hansol says, reaching for a regular Kinder Surprise. “Because of the choking.” He mimes a hand around Mingyu’s throat, and Mingyu gently knocks a fist against Hansol’s shoulder in retaliation, trying not to pinken and pointedly not looking at Minghao.

“See, the toy is half of it! Arguably more important than the chocolate part! It’s notorious!” Mingyu all but cries. With a silent _a-ha!_ Mingyu points at Hansol, who raises an eyebrow but doesn’t slow down unwrapping and eating his egg. 

“Its reputation precedes it,” Hansol adds.

Minghao waves an egg at Mingyu and Hansol, and the little clack of the tiny toy is muffled inside the egg and its packaging. “I mean, the cultural importance of the toy’s presence, sure, yes. But that aside, what would make this a success?”

“What did Jihoon say?” Mingyu asks innocently, breaking off more egg… shell? and letting it melt over his tongue, too-sweet and cloying but good nevertheless.

Instead of answering, Minghao narrows his eyes at him, and Mingyu laughs behind his hand.

“Of course you have to temper the chocolate, Minghao.”

The force with which Minghao steels his glare could cleave a pineapple, spines to core. As it is, Mingyu softens, dropping his teasing smile, and watches as Minghao softens in return, resigned eyes sparkling with challenge. Mingyu’s favorite look.

“Of course I have to temper the chocolate, Mingyu.” Minghao’s tone is even, the same cadence as Mingyu’s, but it has no bite, just bright-windowed eyes and tight, shuttered cheeks. “But I’ve got my method now, and I can do it, easy. How hard can milk chocolate and, what, a thick cream inner layer, and custard for the Joys, be? I’ll be done today.”

Pumping a fist encouragingly and grabbing an egg for the road, Mingyu says, “I love the confidence.”

Minghao smiles up at Mingyu, genuine and sparkling and crinkled like the foil on Ferrero Rocher balls from weeks past, and Mingyu sticks out his tongue. “Get out of here. Go tend to your pets,” Minghao laughs, and Mingyu smiles back before beelining for the Fermentation Station.

Things grow there. Mingyu grows things there, and he grows along with it. That’s the draw, that cooking is alive, people are alive, and none of it is _easy,_ but it’s what Mingyu wants and needs to feel alive, too. He spent so long early in his culinary career worrying about what he could and couldn’t do, that when he decided to just do it, his cup ran over. 

A watched pot never boils.

You can’t overthink it.

Someone profiled him once for a blog and called him a _culinary artist,_ and he laughed so hard at the thought it circled all the way back around to pride. Seungkwan makes art, Chan makes art. Mingyu makes messes. (Minghao says Pollock paintings are some of the most recognizable artistic works on a global scale. Mingyu rolls his eyes a little every time, but the Pollock magnet on his fridge betrays the attachment.)

But really, more than anything, it’s just that Mingyu is happy to get to do what he does every day. To go from washing dishes in restaurants to producing video content and managing a test kitchen at a globally recognized culinary institution? That’s a Cinderella story. Never mind the mice — sometimes literally — or the hard work, or the burnt-cinder cooking that got him there. That’s… ongoing.

“Mingyu, I need you!”

The call cuts through the bustle of the kitchen with unrivaled clarity, the panic and urgency of it shaking out into a laugh, strained but genuine.

Mingyu snaps the last lid onto his seasoning mixtures, ensuring they’re secured as he gives up the ghost and lets a smile spread across his face, and walks — not _jogs,_ but walks — from the back by the walk-in down to Minghao’s workstation, where the camera is poised over Minghao’s frazzled hands and flexing forearms trying to pry apart hard-plastic molds.

Mingyu says, “You need these separated?” and the big-eyed look of relief and stress that greets him in response makes him nod resolutely and take the molds in hand.

“I can’t run warm water over them because I don’t think they’re set yet.”

“Why are you trying to pop them out if they aren’t set?”

A sigh. Not condescending or exasperated, simply as hopeful as Minghao can muster right now. “I need them to be a little soft so they can still be pressed against the other layer and fuse without losing their shape.”

“Because if you just put the inner layer in directly to set there it’ll soften the outer layer too much, got it, got it, got it.” It makes sense to Mingyu, just took a second to get there, as is often the case with these dessert-related conundrums.

With cautious hands, more precise than he normally needs to be, Mingyu wiggles off one side of the mold, running his fingers between the layers to loosen the lower part. One more careful prying motion and the top loosens entirely, and he’s left with only two cracked chocolate-creme eggshells out of the whole sheet.

He lets out a resounding whoop, triumphant, and Minghao beams at him, all exhalation and crescent moons. “Thank you! I don’t know what I would do without you.”

It’s only to survey his own handiwork that Mingyu watches Minghao take the sheet of eggs in hand, watches Minghao’s long middle and ring fingers dip into the wells to gently scoop out the broken chocolate pieces, watches the tendons on the back of Minghao’s hand flex as he cradles and moves the intact shells delicately to the chilled sheet beside him. 

Purely to ensure he didn’t ruin this test. That’s all.

Not that Minghao ever only tests one variable at a time, anyway, which Mingyu really likes. For all his precision and perfectionism, it’s that passion that drives Minghao’s _Gourmet Makes_ series and makes it so popular _._ The earned confidence that of course he could do it better his way, and the ambition to know that he will, no matter what it takes. The carefree way Minghao knows he can get there if he does his due diligence, does his homework, researches the science, pores over the recipes, and _then_ throws everything against the wall to see what sticks. 

“There’s another thing. Do you think I could borrow your laser leveler?”

“My laser leveler? It’s chocolate, Hao. What could you need to be so precise for? Just smush it together!”

This is the wrong thing to say. 

Minghao’s eyes are still pinched in the outer corners with a twinkle when he rolls his eyes and says to camera, “I knew I should have called Lee Jihoon for this.”

“Jihoon would tell you if it were really gourmet, it would be all in one piece instead of separate halves.” Moving to walk away, Mingyu tosses over his shoulder, “And it doesn’t make it sound like you forgive him for challenging you to make these in the first place when you very respectfully call him by his full name.”

“I was being facetious!”

Mingyu likes the casual use of the vocabulary word more than he can discuss at this time, so he counters, “It’s his day off, you couldn’t have called him anyway.”

“I doubt Jihoon would kill me for interrupting his eventful day of…” A beat, then a high-pitched, unsure, “...Knitting? Anyway. How many times have I video called you while you were on honest-to-God _vacation_ in another _country_ and you picked up?”

Heat flushes up Mingyu’s neck, and he wills his cap to stay put so his ears don’t burn red on camera. Again. 

“I’m gonna tell Hoonie-hyung you think he knits!”

“Go away!” Minghao laughs, halfheartedly tossing a hand towel at Mingyu. The sound of the giggle perches on the brim of Mingyu’s cap and lingers around his face and ears, crawling down to settle on his shoulders.

Mingyu doesn’t turn back around, picking up his seasoning containers and making for the pantry, but yells, “The laser leveler is by the small dehydrator in the appliance pantry!”

And Minghao doesn’t say thank you, instead speaking at his usual volume about something else into the mic and camera, but the truth is, he doesn’t have to say thank you. Mingyu knows.

•

It’s ten-thirty at night and Mingyu can’t believe he left his good headphones in his work jacket. Possibly his apron. Wherever they are, it’s at work and not in his mostly-packed carry-on bag at the foot of his bed, that’s for sure.

Hansol said over Kakao that Mingyu should just buy a new pair at the corner store, but there’s a principle to the thing that Mingyu cannot get past.

_Hyung, why are you going to go all the way back over to Nonhyeon-dong when you have a perfectly good GS25 like, half a block away from your apartment?_

_It’s fine, Sol-ah, I’m on vacation for the next few days, so I want_ my _headphones, you know? Why spend money on something I already have?_

_Valid. I just hope you double ordered on eggs, don’t forget Junhui is starting the “every way to cook an egg” shoot on Wednesday;;_

_Try triple ordered. You gotta crack a few eggs to make an omelet, huh??_

_ㅋㅋㅋㅋ x] have a good vacation hyung!_

As he climbs the stairs and walks down the hall into the kitchen proper, Mingyu registers a faint ringing noise, the muffled clang of utensils against metal mixing bowls that echoes in his brain sometimes when he looks too hard into a pot light in his apartment. He tries to make his footfalls extra heavy so as not to surprise whichever overachiever is still working at _ten goddamn thirty_ on a Monday night, and even loudly coughs into his sleeve a little for added effect. Soonyoung would be proud of the theatrics, probably.

Maybe Mingyu would be more surprised to see Minghao at their workstation if the last thing Mingyu heard from him when he left for the day wasn’t a determined, “I’m just going to stay for maybe an hour to figure this out, then go home and go to sleep and not think about it all night. I will think about something else and not Kinder Eggs. And that’s a promise.”

“I would call you a liar if I didn’t know you really did think you’d be done with this by now,” Mingyu announces instead, rounding the station and digging through his jacket and apron pockets until his fingers close around his headphones.

Minghao’s head doesn’t even snap up, eyes trained on his own hand, whisking furiously a bowl of white chocolate. “This is day _three._ That’s ridiculous, right? It’s fucking _Kinder Eggs,”_ Minghao all but spits, blowing his hair out of his eyes. He sounds tired.

“When was the last time you ate something that wasn’t made of chocolate?” Mingyu says, palms flat on the workstation. Minghao looks up then, pulling a face, nose scrunched up with distaste. The effect is wonderful, especially with his messy hair and _glasses._ Mingyu laughs. It echoes against all the metal in the room, too-loud among the darkness. “That’s what I thought.”

Waving a hand dismissively, Minghao says, “Like you haven’t done the same thing.”

That’s fair. Mingyu knows that’s one of the double-edged swords of working in the test kitchen–the abundance of food means you’re never _hungry,_ but it’s not like you’re eating well-balanced meals; you’re eating spaghetti for six hours straight, or absentmindedly gnawing on fucked-up waffle cones. It’s why Seungkwan eats overnight oats and drinks liter upon liter of water out of various jars and receptacles, and why Soonyoung always starts his mornings at the gym. Everything has to be in balance, and Minghao is usually good at that.

“Yeah, but. You know.”

Minghao sighs. His shoulders are tense. “I know.” 

He rubs a hand over his jaw, leaving a smear of the white chocolate along the line of it. Mingyu tries very hard not to laugh and leans over the counter, reaching out and using his thumb to wipe it off. It’s a testament to how tired Minghao must be that he doesn’t say anything, just closes his eyes and stands still to let Mingyu do it. There’s a little intake of breath when Mingyu’s hand pulls away and he cleans it off on Minghao’s apron, but Minghao’s eyes stay closed until Mingyu leans back onto his side of the workstation.

“Let’s go get some dinner,” Mingyu says.

“I can’t.”

“You mean you won’t.”

Shaking his head, Minghao picks up his tiny whisk and starts in on his bowl again. “I’m close, I can feel it. I just need to be more productive.”

And Mingyu’s been there, too, poring over a recipe book for hours until his eyes crossed, activating yeast until his brain felt as frothy as the top layer of the glass bowl’s contents. It’s why he reaches for Minghao’s bowl, gently taking it out of his hands. Minghao’s long fingers float there for a moment, suspended in the muscle memory of what he’s been doing all night, and Mingyu smiles gently at him, eyebrows raised.

“You are the most aggressively efficient and productive person in this place, and that’s counting Lee Jihoon. Let’s get some food. I _promise_ we can talk out ratios and recipes while we’re at it, but a change of task will help. I guarantee it.”

Minghao fights a smile, and Mingyu knows he’s won. He turns to put cling wrap over Minghao’s bowl, and when he turns back Minghao is taking his apron off, hands winding the waist tie around the bundle neatly so he can tuck it under his workstation for tomorrow.

“Honestly, I kind of need a drink,” Minghao says, rubbing at his eyes with the meat of his palms.

“We can make that happen, Xu Minghao.”

At that, Minghao laughs, a little tired but genuine nonetheless, and Mingyu knocks their shoulders together, bending ever-so-slightly at the knee to put them at equal height.

“I don’t think I can make it out of here. I haven’t eaten since everyone else left,” Minghao admits, taking a few steps and sitting at Jihoon’s tall stool next to the range.

Mingyu shrugs and rummages in his own drawer for a bottle opener. “Okay. Then let’s have a drink and I’ll make us dinner.”

Minghao raises an eyebrow, throwing his voice to reach Mingyu where he looks through the wine cabinet. “Don’t you leave for vacation tomorrow?”

Shrugging again, Mingyu brandishes an unopened bottle of red wine, uncorking it deftly in record time. Minghao looks impressed, and Mingyu tries not to take it too seriously. When he turns back, glasses in hand, Minghao is already drinking straight from the bottle, and Mingyu laughs, the sound of it bubbling out of him like he can’t control it.

“What, you wanted some?” Minghao says sarcastically, holding out the bottle, and the smile Mingyu gets is a sign that the balm is working.

“Yeah, actually, so give it here,” Mingyu retorts, lips to the bottle and taking a long drink of his own. When he sets the bottle back down next to Minghao, Minghao is giving him a thoughtful look, eyes roving his face. There’s a smirk playing on his lips.

“Do you remember, like two months after you started here, the—”

Mingyu winces. “Don’t say it.”

“The lambrusco!” Minghao giggles, and Mingyu groans, brandishing tongs threateningly.

“My innumerable achievements in this place have all been outshined by the fucking lambrusco explosion of nineteen-twenty-three.”

“It does feel like a legendary event, like Pompeii,” Minghao muses.

_(“I think this is fucked up. I think I fucked this up.”_

_Jihoon raises an eyebrow. “How— what do you mean? You put the champagne yeast in, right?”_

_“Yes, like, two weeks ago!” He remembers vividly, because it was on his month anniversary of working in the kitchen. Mingyu squints at the wine bottle, eyeing the delicate purple through the glass, shaking it gently and hoping for some kind of reaction. He holds it up to his eye like a pirate’s spyglass and, okay, yeah, there are not very many bubbles in there. The fermentation worked, it’s alcoholic, and there’s carbonation, maybe? Maybe not._

_That’s how it is sometimes. You try something and it doesn’t work, and you learn and you try again. Life’s like that._

_“I don’t think it worked. I think this one’s done.”_

_Jihoon shrugs, opening up his laptop in front of himself. Mingyu sighs, moving to flip the bottle, and—_

_BOOM!_

_Shrieks ring out, startled, and every head in the kitchen turns to look at the slow drip of homemade lambrusco dripping from the aluminum lights overhead, red wine splattered everywhere, a Pollock painting on the tile, on the workstation, on, fuck, Jihoon’s laptop, an utter deluge of faux-carbonated precipitation._

_The bottle is another story. It’s gone. Vaporized. Atomized._

_“Oh, my God,” Mingyu hears Minghao say faintly, through the ringing in his own ears._

_The look on Jihoon’s face is shellshocked. He doesn’t say anything for two days._

_Mingyu starts on another batch that same day._

_To be precise, Mingyu starts on another batch after Wonwoo and Minghao drag him to Seoryoung, the onsite nurse, to address the veritable littering of microcuts he has on his face and hands from “exploding_ glass, _Mingyu.”_

_And if Minghao comes over and checks on him four more times before they’re done for the day, laying their fingers out together and narrowing his eyes at the mess of blue band-aids covering Mingyu’s hands, so be it.)_

“Great moments in history,” Mingyu laughs. “Help me dredge the chicken.”

Minghao sniffs from where he already had chicken thighs in hand, dipping them in the flour and egg and panko. “I thought I was being wined and dined here, I didn’t sign up for more work.”

“Look me in the eye and tell me you would have let me do everything for you, even now.”

The chicken sizzles in the oil, and Mingyu holds Minghao’s gaze, not missing the way Minghao’s ears go a little pink against his dark hair. Minghao takes on a lot, too much, on occasion, and gets in his own head. But he always tries to reach out for ideas when he needs it, because the collaboration makes the work stronger, and because many hands make light work, and because you should be able to rely on your friends and ask them for help. Mingyu knows how hard that can be sometimes.

“How does Jihoon sit on this thing?” Minghao mutters, standing up and pushing the stool out of the way with one foot.

Mingyu shrugs. “Feat of sheer will. You seen that guy’s posture?”

Snorting, Minghao says, “I don’t think Soonyoung’s stick-up-the-ass theory holds water.”

“Me neither. You know how many Backstreet Boys and Sistar songs Lee Jihoon knows?”

Minghao giggles, using his hands to brace himself and sliding to the floor, twisting at the waist to stretch out his back. He reaches up, fingers feeling along the workstation countertop for the wine bottle, and pulls it down carefully, not a drop spilled. (Perhaps most of that can be attributed to the fact that three-quarters of the bottle is already empty.)

Mingyu is not really tipsy, and neither is Minghao, but things are all a little soft around the edges, bokeh and flour dusting their clothes because they didn’t put their aprons back on. And Minghao is eating chicken off a plate balanced on Mingyu’s knees, both of them sitting on the floor between their workstation and Soonyoung and Jihoon’s.

“Are Kinder Eggs really the tipping point for you?” Mingyu asks through a mouthful of chicken, covering his mouth with one hand.

Minghao laughs, knocks a foot against Mingyu’s, and says, “No, something has to be, though, right? I just,” he sighs, “I want to make things that make people smile, and try things nobody has tried before. And everyone likes it so much! I want to keep doing that, for me and for everyone. But that’s a lot of pressure, you know?”

Mingyu does know. The expectations weigh. Accountability, and the responsibility to take part in something bigger than yourself. It’s easy to say you contribute, easy to say _relax, it’ll be fine,_ but much harder to look the people you care about in the face and know that you win together or lose together. It’s a _do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do_ kind of complex, the kind where everybody knows the hardest advice to take is your own.

“It’s just so…” Minghao trails off, wrinkling his nose. The _stupid, dumb, childish_ lingers unsaid. “I feel like I’m always trying to measure up to something and I can’t get hold of it. Like there’s the finish line, and when I’m a step away, they just keep moving the line.”

The way Minghao is looking at him, trusting and open, makes Mingyu feel stripped. Threads pulled bare, his favorite jeans, worn in perfect places but a little too revealing.

He makes the mistake of looking Minghao directly in his eyes and feels his chest tighten. 

It’s a lot too revealing, actually.

So Mingyu keeps talking just to keep his mouth and brain busy. “Whose standards are you trying to live up to?”

Minghao groans and pushes up his glasses a little. “Mine, I know, but I just feel like everyone is looking at me all the time. I need to be better.”

Mingyu tugs at Minghao’s bootstrings to give his hands something to do, and despite the way something in the pit of his stomach is warning that maybe he shouldn’t, he scoots up to lean against the shelves next to Minghao, lets Minghao tap his foot against Mingyu’s again, this time closer. His legs are so long, in a different way than Mingyu’s own. Mingyu does not look at Minghao’s hands on his thighs. He does not look at his thighs next to Minghao’s.

“What’s better than your best?” 

And it sounds cheesy when he says it, Mingyu knows it does; he feels it dripping _queso flameado,_ catching _konchijeu_ as it moves his throat and chest when he looks at Minghao, whose ears twitch a little when that soft smile spreads across his face.

“Aish, that’s so cliché. I thought you had more imagination than that,” Minghao says, teeth showing through a lopsided smile.

“Oh, please, I just regurgitate lines from all my favorite romance movies.”

“Please don’t say regurgitate near my chocolate,” Minghao says, and it reads both fondly joking and exhaustedly serious, punctuated with his head leaning on Mingyu’s shoulder and a hand on Mingyu’s thigh, patting casually before coming to a rest on the grey-wash denim.

Mingyu tries to ignore the way his chest constricts at the sight, at the feeling, the way his whole body tenses like when a cat sits on you and you don’t want to breathe too hard for fear they’ll leave. Tries to ignore it in the same sort of way he’s tried to shove all of this down for months and say it’s normal colleague stuff and pointedly not think about the sound of Minghao’s laugh or the fact that Mingyu could listen to him talk about adding citric acid to raspberry coulis for hours and not get bored or the sense memory Mingyu has of the electric current that zipped up his spine when they made sourdough and their hands worked the dough together.

He stares down at Minghao’s hand spanning his thigh. He put his rings on sometime over the last hour, like how he does sometimes for publication parties and milestone events. Non-cooking hands. The cool touch of it burns brûlée into Mingyu’s skin and retinas alike.

“You always make me feel better,” Minghao says sweetly, almost sleepily, and Mingyu looks up, then.

“You deserve to feel good all the time,” Mingyu says, surprised. “You work so hard, all the time, and you hold this place together.”

“Thank you, Mingyu.”

A squeeze of Minghao’s hand on his thigh, then, and Mingyu holds his gaze for a few moments longer.  
  


•

“So I promised I wasn’t going to call you on vacation—”

“You did no such thing,” Mingyu laughs, but lets the crackle of connection buffer the video call anyway.

“—how do I use the new dehydrator?” 

“Is this you asking to use my new dehydrator? What’s wrong with the old one?”

It lags, but there’s no mistaking those big eyes and purposely light tone, conversational and persuasive. Like Mingyu needs persuading. “What do you mean? It’s just, it’s so close to us and it’s already set up…”

Mingyu is so _weak._

“Fahrenheit or Celsius setting on the far left, two buttons down is set when it’s blinking, next is time in hours, and the inside has the dual fans! Fancy! Is it for the crunchy ball things?”

There’s beeping in time with what Mingyu presumes to be button pressing, and Minghao’s face lights up. This is so much easier, looking at him through the camera, from a different continent, Mingyu made aware of the way his own eyes linger by being forced to look at himself in the corner of his screen.

“Yeah, for the wafer balls for the Joys! Thank you, I love you, you’re the best. Are you having fun on vacation?”

That’s a lot of input for Mingyu to process, and his brain feels a little like it’s been dehydrated, shrunken and concentrated. One thing at a time.

“It’s nice, but I keep thinking about—” okay, “work.”

Minghao nods, eyes glued to the screen now that the little pan is in the dehydrator. “I’m the same way, you can never really leave. You can take the boy out of the test kitchen, but you can’t take the kitchen out of the boy, right?” he says, and Mingyu smiles.

“Something like that, yeah.”

  
•

“Mingyu! Come here, I need you!”

It razors through the kitchen the moment Mingyu finally stands up from the ordering computer, the familiar lilt of it traveling as the crow flies directly to Mingyu, drawing him out of the chair and over to their workstation.

Seungcheol is chewing when he arrives, his jacket still on, bundled up in his parka with a ballcap, mask tugged down loose around his neck. “Mingyu!” He curls an arm around Mingyu’s shoulders and tugs him close. It feels like being cuddled by a marshmallow.

“You’re so warm, hyung,” Mingyu laughs.

“Forgive me, I had only one foot in the door when Myungho-yah demanded I try his Kinder Egg, and the adrenaline hasn’t worn off yet.”

It’s then that Mingyu turns, and when he does Minghao is looking expectantly at him, one hand splayed wide over the white Calacatta marble next to a tray of pretty pastel egg cups, shiny-chocolate eggs perched neatly upon each one.

“Your turn!” His face is hopeful, but it sounds apprehensive.

Mingyu reaches for one, but Minghao shakes his head, pointing at the one on the far left instead. When Mingyu picks it up and shakes it around next to his ear, the plasticky sound of the little capsule rattles pleasantly. “What did you do for the toy?”

Minghao pinkens, but the smile dimpling at his cheeks is proud. “I made them.”

“You did? Wow! You love an art project!”

Beaming, Minghao laughs. “I do! They’re little polymer-clay animals! But that’s not the point! Please just... eat it. I’m ready for this to be over,” he says, half-exasperated with eagerness.

There isn’t a _snap_ or sharp fragmentation, just more of a soft glacial pulling-apart of the chocolate outer layer, tugging the inner layer along with it. It’s glossy inside and out, and the inside sticks ever-so-slightly to the capsule, smearing it a little with what looks like white chocolate. Half of the egg makes it into Mingyu’s mouth at once and dissolves almost instantly, a pleasant sweetness coating his mouth.

Minghao reaches for his rolling pin and taps it against his leg absentmindedly. “What do you think?”

“That’s really good! You went with white chocolate for the inside on this one? What about the creme?”

Minghao frowns. “It was too sticky, it would set up too hard like royal icing or too soft and mushy and get everywhere. Gourmet is gourmet, so I did white chocolate and this is the final product. No more,” he declares.

Grinning, Mingyu teases, “Oh, this is it? Then it’s perfect. You fucking nailed it. Ferrero can suck it.”

Seungcheol halfheartedly squawks, “You can’t say that!”

Waving his non-egg hand, Mingyu says, “It’s fine, they’ll edit it out. Or they’ll put the little bubble on the screen that says my opinions don’t reflect that of this institution, or something. I have a lot of respect for all confectioners. Confectioneries. Confectionists?”

“He hates it,” Minghao twinkles to the camera, and Mingyu’s face blanches.

“No! Hao, it’s good!” Mingyu insists.

The giggle that follows makes Mingyu’s cheeks warm, and Seungcheol raises an eyebrow, shuffling off to the side to take off his jacket and move toward his own workstation.

“It’s toy time!” Mingyu announces, and pops open the capsule with glee. Inside is a tiny little white dog made of baked clay, with big brown painted-on eyes, no bigger than Mingyu’s thumbnail. His breath catches, and he whips his head around so fast to tell Minghao how perfect it is that his baseball cap twists askew on his forehead.

“Let me just—” Minghao reaches up and straightens Mingyu’s baseball cap, fingertips ducking under the sides of it to brush out the short hair above Mingyu’s ears. “I can’t believe you wear this inside,” Minghao mutters with a smile.

There must be something awful like his heart’s fond betrayal on his face, because Mingyu watches Minghao step back a little to survey his handiwork and sees his expression change, eyebrows pulled together with something like concern.

“Mingyu-yah, what is it?”

His face is so open, and Mingyu trusts him, so he opens his mouth and asks, “Will you go on a walk with me?”

“Right now?”

The following silence seems to stretch for eons, Minghao’s ears going red and his eyes widening surprised and his hands tightening around the pretty igneous rolling pin Mingyu got him as a gift when he went to Hawai’i. It’s charcoal-black, wet-polished volcanic rock, 58 centimeters, and Minghao is holding it against his chest like a lifeline, fingers splayed wide over the taper and over his heart. Like he knows already.

“If you can,” Mingyu says, and tries to tear his eyes away from Minghao.

Minghao’s ears are still pink, but his voice comes out calm when he sets down his rolling pin and says, “I think I can spare a few minutes.”

The air is cold and crisp on the deck of the next floor up, Mingyu’s manager key unlocking the main door onto the landing. There’s a stray little cabbage plant in a pot at the railing, growing strong with Mingyu’s care next to the stark-white stucco of the building. And isn’t that it? Trying to cultivate something alive, to give yourself a pocket of something beautiful and living in the greyness of it all?

Mingyu stares at the cabbage, leaves peeking through lush soil. He watered it yesterday, so the deep brown of it is rich, and warm. Kinder Egg soil. He could laugh, and almost does, but Minghao’s hand comes up, lies flat against the small of Mingyu’s back, fingers tucked up under the tie of his apron, which he still hasn’t taken off. Like there’s time yet to run back down and keep things the way they are.

“Did you want to talk about something?” Minghao asks.

And instead of gazing into a cabbage, Mingyu takes a deep breath, and looks at Minghao instead.

“I really want to kiss you. I feel like I think about kissing you all the time. Sometimes you say something so smart and insightful that I want to put my mouth on yours and swallow it and just kiss you forever. I’m sorry,” Mingyu says in one breath, and his chest aches and his shoulders are tense and he feels like blood is rushing into his head.

“Are you feeling okay?” Minghao says kindly, and makes the grave error of resting his pretty hand on Mingyu’s cheek, thumb on his cheekbone, and shorting out what’s left of Mingyu’s neural activity. 

That answer leaves a little to be desired. “What do you mean,” Mingyu says, going for casual and ending up with flat.

“You never overthink like this,” Minghao smiles, and the soft way he does it makes Mingyu think, maybe.

“Minghao,” he starts, strained and apologetic. His cheek feels hot under Minghao’s hand, and he feels the thumb swipe softly across his warm skin. He braces himself to try to uncrack an egg, to untoast bread, to do the impossible and put it all back.

But instead, there’s Minghao, saying, “Can I?”

Mingyu nods, heart kicked up into his throat, and Minghao shuffles one step closer, his toes touching Mingyu’s, and then they’re kissing, Minghao’s mouth pressed up against his, exhaling warm despite the nip in the air. It’s Kinder Egg and Mingyu’s morning caramel latte, Minghao’s dirty chai and gourmet-white-chocolate-not-creme and the feeling of cabbage leaves reaching for the sun.

Minghao’s hand never leaves his face, lips soft against each other, and Mingyu thinks absently that if he were still washing dishes he’d be committing time theft by making out with his coworker on the clock. Salaried life suits him, he thinks, and it makes him smile into the kiss, where Minghao’s parted lips slot perfectly against his, moving together with an unhurried want that Mingyu needs more of.

“I like the little dog, can I keep it?”

Minghao laughs, the giggle soft and contained between their faces, and says, “It was the surprise. The toy was the surprise.”

“Not the only one, I guess,” Mingyu says plainly, stealing another kiss, (and another, and another) from Minghao, whose hand presses a little closer, a little warmer, into Mingyu’s skin. 

“All right, then,” Minghao says fondly, pulling away just enough. There’s a pleased little smile and a flush that won’t leave his face that Mingyu likes a lot. He smooths out the front of Mingyu’s unwrinkled apron. “Come back inside. I need you.”

**Author's Note:**

> idol mentions: seoryoung from gwsn
> 
> thank you for reading!
> 
> find me on [twitter](http://www.twitter.com/eightpaint/) and [curiouscat](http://www.curiouscat.me/pixiepower/)!


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